This was the most helpful and concise explanation I found anywhere. It helped me no end. Couple of things though. My system couldn't find a library even though I had it installed. It was only in lib32 and lib64 so I copied a link to the lib folder. This was libGL.so.1.

Importantly, this installed the proprietary drivers but still didn't give me the hardware acceleration I needed. By accident I found that adding Option "TexturedVideo" under the Driver "fglrx" worked perfectly.

Thank you to the author.

Installation guide not working for 8.476

Hi,

It seems to me that the driver installation guide of 8-4 (8.476) does not work on Ubuntu 8.04. Following step-by-step the guide (method 2), I allways end up with 8.473 installed and running (while the system contains only 8.476 packages). If all instances, packages and modules of driver 8.473 are manually purged before 8.476 installation, the whole process ends up with the nonfunctional 3D (using mesa driver)

--- Eugenio, 10:30(CET), Tuesday, 22th April 2008

Eugenio, I have only tested it on a fresh install of Hardy, with only the mesa driver installed previously.
I updated the guide to 8.476 and am worried that it fails on some machines.

--- ilcavero

Thanks for your effort to solve the problem. I've been also looking for the solution on my local Ubuntu forum. I've met the other Ubuntu 8.04 who encountered the exactly same problem. After a week of googling and searching we still have found no solution. However, I found some notices on the web and it says, that the problem will be hopefully solved with the release of ubuntu 8.04.1 on July 6th. On the other hand, the previous driver 8.3 (8.473) works pretty well and hence there is no urgent need to install 8.4.

-- Eugenio, 9:00(CET), Sunday 27th April 2008

Cleanup

I did a little cleanup and formatting, and clarified the configuration section in Method 2. I inserted a comment about TexturedVideo on the newer cards for Xv, as well. I hope nobody minds. --Porter 08:11PM EDT 29 April 2008

Updating a manually installed driver

Would it be good to add some notes on how to update the driver when new releases are available. I'm a little unsure of this myself; is it as simple as building the packages as per the instructions and doing the usual sudo apt-get install or is there more to it?

There is no auto-update routine as of yet. Upgrading will require a simple download, build, and install per the existing method. --Porter 02:10PM EDT 06 May 2008

OK, thanks. I should also mention I did a manual install on a clean install of Kubuntu Hardy - everything is fine but the restricted drivers GUI tool (jockey-kde) notes that fglrx is "In Use" AND "enabled". Shouldn't be any need to panic :)

"In USE" and "ENABLED" is also shown by Restricted drivers manager in Gnome after using the second manual instalation method. However, the driver works fine.

--- Eugenio, 10:45(CET), Monday, 12th May 2008

Additional xorg.conf Edits

AIGLX

A while back, I think in feisty it was recommended to add
Option "AIGLX" "off"
to xorg.conf to get compiz to work.
This will need to be removed when removing xgl or the desktop will break.